Compared
Notula and Typora
Typora is where hiding the syntax while you type came from, and it is still the cleanest version of it. Notula owes it the idea and differs on scope.
What Typora is better at
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It is a better writing app
Lighter, faster to open, years of refinement in the typing experience, and themeable down to the CSS. If the only thing that matters is writing prose in Markdown, Typora is the better choice.
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Export to anything
PDF, DOCX, HTML, LaTeX, ePub, with pandoc behind it. Notula exports nothing: it writes Markdown back to the file it opened.
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It opens any file, anywhere
A single .md on your desktop, in a Dropbox folder, wherever. Notula wants a git repository and is much less useful without one.
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Linux
Typora ships it. Notula does not, yet.
What Notula is better at
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Comments and threads
Typora is a single-person editor with no notion of a reviewer. Notula's comment threads are committed in the repository beside the document, with replies, mentions and a review inbox.
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Git is inside it
Background fetch, publishing with one sentence about what changed, and conflicts shown as a choice between two paragraphs. In Typora, git is a separate application you also have to know.
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A workspace, not a file
A tree of documents, quick open, full-text search, split panes and per-pane back and forward across thousands of files.
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You are told what changed
Notula fetches in the background and marks the documents somebody else has moved on, with who moved them, and nothing changes under your cursor until you take it.
Side by side
| Capability | Typora | Notula |
|---|---|---|
| WYSIWYG with no syntax on screen | ||
| Export to PDF, DOCX, LaTeX | — | |
| Opens a single file anywhere | — | |
| Linux build | — | |
| Comment on a passage, reply, resolve | — | |
| Git inside the editor | — | |
| Document tree, quick open, split panes | Partly | |
| Told when a teammate changes a document | — | |
| Free | — |
Both columns are filled in, including the rows Notula loses. A table where one column is ticks all the way down is an advert, and the first four rows of this one are things the other tool does and Notula does not.
Which one to use
Use Typora when
You write alone and you want the best desktop Markdown writing experience there is. Buy Typora. It costs very little and it is excellent.
Use Notula when
The document has readers who leave comments on it, and it lives in a repository other people push to.
Try it against a real repository
Free, with no account and no server. Open a repository you already have and the documents in it are a tree in about a second.
Apple silicon and Windows x64 above. Intel and Arm builds, and what to do if macOS calls it damaged.